Sometimes after the initial greeting my T will just sit there and look at me waiting for me and allowing me to determine the direction of the session. Sometimes there are several seconds of silence because I don’t know what to say and I want her to take the wheel. I do feel awkward with the silence, but she just waits knowing that something is going on inside my head and is bound to come out, and she has no problem waiting. If I don’t take the wheel she will finally take a deep breath and bring up something herself.

I seriously doubt that your T doesn’t remember details from your last session. She is probably just waiting to see where you went with it and how it evolved over the last week. She is just being gentle and patient with you. She knows you are a butterfly:

If you were to find a fresh cocoon still intact, you know the end result of its metamorphosis is going to be a beautiful butterfly. Each day you return with anticipation and you’ve observed enough that you can tell that its transformation is nearly complete. Eventually, through the silky transparency of the chrysalis you can even see its dark image and coloration, you can even tell that it is a monarch butterfly, but you still wait, because you know its time is not yet. Day after day you check on the little miracle, patiently waiting and hoping to see it before it flies away. Finally the day comes and to your excitement you find the butterfly clinging to the outside of the broken chrysalis, but you notice it is just sitting there, its wings all tiny, crumpled, and wet. You fear something went terribly wrong so you try to force its little wings apart and you ever so gently pull it away from its former shell. But now you find it even more helpless than before. You did not know that a butterfly spends the next hour receiving vital fluid from the empty chrysalis that pumps a substance into the butterfly filling the butterfly’s body and wings so they enlarge. You did not know that only one more hour and that monarch’s wings would have been full and dry, and ready for flying. But by hurrying the process this butterfly is now permanently impaired and will not survive. She has to wait for you to spread your wings on your own.

I hear you on the embarrassing details River. I have many humiliating experiences. Some I’ve shared and some I still haven’t, for the most part because they have not come up in session. Those humiliating details that I have shared with her felt a lot less humiliating after I gave them exposure. They feel so BIG inside of us, but when we lay it all out we can see for ourselves that what we were holding against ourselves was not worth the energy of keeping it bottled up inside. Forgiving ourselves is a big step in the process of healing. For me I had to forgive others first. I had to recognize that they were deserving of forgiveness, before I could ultimately see that I too was deserving of forgiveness. You will get there River, Just be as patient and understanding with yourself as your T is.

JM